


Promises Kept

by madame_faust



Series: The Ghost and the Persian [2]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:54:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23447350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: A rumination on Erik and the Daroga's relationship in a semi-Leroux compliant one-shot to fill the prompt "You look like a monkey whose been strategically shaved." It's weirdly angsty, given that set-up, but has a hopeful ending!Now with a follow-up from the Daroga's perspective, based on the prompt, "Things you said when you thought I was asleep."
Relationships: Erik | Phantom of the Opera/The Persian
Series: The Ghost and the Persian [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1734133
Comments: 34
Kudos: 24





	1. Parted

He hadn’t realized he’d been chuckling aloud until the Daroga lifted his eyes and, without turning his head, looked at him in the mirror’s reflection.

“What’s so very amusing, may I ask?”

He - Ismail, until recently, and Ivan before that, and Le Mort Vivant before that and, ah, but going so _very_ far into the past gave him a headache - he smiled and slunk down behind the gauzy net meant to keep the mosquitoes off the bed and its occupants.

He’d demanded that when they parted - for part they _must_ \- that it be in Italy. Venice, precisely It seemed a romantic notion at the time and besides, he’d never been to Venice, but he’d not accounted for the the heat, the insects, or the stench of the canals at midday. 

“You look like a monkey,” he remarked, stifling another bout of giggles. “Who’s been strategically shaved.”

The Daroga turned then, laying down his straight razor upon the table where the basin lay. Quite unguarded it was. If he, whoever he was now, liked he could have picked it up in his clever fingers and drawn the length of it neatly across the Daroga’s thick neck. 

Instead he batted him away; the Daroga had trimmed and half-shaved his beard and the bristles itched horribly against his face - perhaps he was still Ismail? That was what the Daroga called him. Well, that and ‘you infernal brat.’ But yes, he could be Ismail. At least for the rest of the day.

Ismail, then, cringed away as the Daroga’s rough cheek scratched his own, pale, bare, and gaunt. 

“No, no!” he cried, pushing him away without offering real resistance. “It’s horrible! Have a pity on me, Daroga, by heaven, have mercy!”

The Daroga’s beautiful jade eyes glittered down at him with an unreadable expression. Sometimes Ismail thought he saw pity. Other times annoyance. And still more...something else. Something he’d glimpsed but rarely and never directed at him. Those heart-melting looks he chalked up to a trick of the light, as he did now. 

The Daroga withdrew with a put-upon sigh and returned to his shaving mirror. 

“Then let me finish,” he said, picking up the blade again. “Unless you’d rather I slit my own throat.”

The vehemence of Ismail’s reply to the Daroga’s pawky brand of humor surprised them both.

“Never!” he declared sharply. “Never-ever. Not _you_ , Daroga. Not you.”

They locked eyes again in the mirror. Mirrors, Ismail decided, were not such wretched things so long as the Daroga appeared within them. 

“Very well,” he replied seriously. “Then leave me in peace.”

A profound sense of melancholy fell upon Ismail, from the tips of his white, murderous fingers to the crown of his hideous head, to the center of his aching heart. Was that it, then? Once they parted the Daroga might have his peace if he was quick and clever in his movements and his assumption of a new identity.

Ismail, wherever he was - _who_ ever he was - when they parted was certain of one thing: when the Daroga left him, he was sure he’d never know peace again. 

“Will you marry?” Ismail asked, behind the net, a crude pantomime of a bridal veil if ever there was one. “When you’re free. Will you marry?”

The Daroga paused in lathering up the remainder of his beard. He seemed to truly consider the question. Then shook his head. 

“No. I don’t think I will.”

The thought brought satisfaction to Ismail - deep satisfaction coursed through his wicked veins. It was not right, of course. If he were any kind of man, he would wish the Daroga to marry, to father ten beautiful children and live a comfortable life as the most respected man in town. 

But he was no kind of man. They both knew it. And although the Daroga did not look back at him in the mirror, he likely knew that Ismail was smiling to himself, a wide twisted smile, for that was all the smile he had.

For a while, silence reigned, excepting the plink-plink of water and soap dropping into the basin. At last the Daroga turned, his face bare and clean, without a spot of blood upon his cheeks or chin for though he had not shaved himself before, he had a steady hand.

“Well?” he asked, raising an eyebrow in gentle irony. ‘What do you think? You’re not laughing.”

Indeed he was not. No, Ismail was quite short of breath. What a face the Daroga had been hiding under all that hair! What a jaw, square as of course it ought to be upon such a man. There was a dimple in his chin to match the two that suddenly blossomed on either side of his mouth when he smiled. It was a young man’s face. Almost a stranger’s face. But a beautiful face.

Ismail crawled the length of the bed and slithered off, thin, twisted lips parted and he sighed a reverent oath. 

“Oh, Daroga,” he breathed, thumbs rising up to smooth over his mouth, freshly-revealed like a flower sprung up from hard earth with the coming of spring. “Such lips you have! I must sketch them! Or better yet, chisel them in stone.”

Marble could produce a wonderful smoothness, Ismail thought critically. Then future generations could run their thumbs over the facsimile of the Daroga’s mouth and know what it was to touch Heaven. 

A chuffing laugh blossomed warm over Ismail’s fingertips. “We don’t have time for all that.”

Tears pricked, hot and painful in the corner of his yellow eyes.

“How am I meant to remember you, then?” he demanded, the Daroga’s perfect face still entombed between his hands. 

Again, that look. That unknowable expression that turned his knees to water and made his heart sing a song more beautiful than any he could commit to paper. 

“This will have to suffice,” the Daroga said simply. And he rose up to touch his perfect mouth to Ismail’s imperfect one. 

They fell back onto the bed, lost in one another, until the bright sun dropped low over the rooftops and the room was dark and dusky. 

“I must go,” the Daroga said. He ran a sturdy brown finger down Ismail’s bony sternum. “You’ll remember your promise?”

_I will aid you if you promise me: no more death. Ismail. No more crimes. No more shows of cruelty. If you cannot promise me this, then I will let them take you. Take your eyes, your head, whatever pleases them. You must promise if you want my...help._

There had been a pause. Just a quick inhale, a change of course, before the word ‘help.’ Ismail almost asked him to backtrack, to ask what he thought Ismail _truly_ wanted. But so eager was he to forsake his former life, his former evils, if only it meant the Daroga would be by his side for a little while longer, that he vowed to be good the way an over-eager seminarian might drop too quickly, a hard clatter of knees upon the floor of a cathedral, and prostrate himself before the Lord.

“I’ll remember,” Ismail said, tracing his fingers over the Daroga’s face. Strong brow, hawkish proud nose, glorious jaw, delightfully dimpled cheeks and chin, supple mouth, and beautiful, _beautiful_ eyes. Whether Ismail vowed to remember his promise or remember his lover, it was one in the same as far as he was concerned. 

Eventually, the Daroga withdrew. They said little else. They did not kiss on parting. They did not shake hands. The Daroga’s traveling cloak blended with the shadows in the narrow streets, but even after he lost sight of him, Ismail stared and stared. Remembering. 

And, years later, when the weight of keeping his promise to be good became to much to bear in a world of orderly men and women who lived in quaint little houses on quaint little boulevards and passed their quaint little nothing lives in ignorance and unforgivable dullness drove him - he had not been Ismail since that day - into the dark depths of a temple to music...he remembered him.

Remembered him in his soft, commanding voice, lightly accented and speaking French. Remembered him in his honest appreciation of music and dance for, thought he Daroga was not an artist himself, he valued expressions of art in others. Remembered him in those green eyes and handsome face, only a run a little ragged with age and care.

And, was filled with the first tentative hope that had touched him in years - more hope even than he’d felt when he’d heard a yellow-haired orphan girl warble out a tune when she thought no one could hear - when he whispered, “Daroga?” into an empty theatre box.

The Daroga did not jump or cry out. He relaxed back into his seat with a gentle smile on his lips. Those lips that he had tried to render in charcoal and oil and stone and never quite managed to get right. 

“There you are,” the Daroga replied quietly. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”


	2. Reunited

_Don’t look, Daroga, don’t look_ , Erik - he was calling himself _Erik_ now - said warningly. _The years have not been so kind to me as they have been to you._

And yet, in the pitch dark of _Erik’s_ strange home in the cellars, it was as though the passage of two decades’ time vanished along with the light. That same lean, dangerously thin body which belied inner strength and grace of movement. Those long, clever fingers caressing every place on Farrokh’s body which would bring him to bliss. 

He’d remembered him, every piece of him, uncannily well. There was no awkward fumbling, no pretense of a stilted renewal of acquaintance. No sly glances and questioning eyes or hesitance in their voices, Well, I suppose you might like...?

None of that. Simply a joining together of two very old friends, falling into old habits the way a reformed drunkard fell back into the bottle at the slightest provocation. 

So well did Erik know him that Farrokh was forced to conclude that there had been very few - if any - others in the intervening years. That thought brought him a grim satisfaction; no one understood the man as Farrokh did. The pleasure and the danger. 

No more murders, he made him swear on a cold, windy night in Mazandaran. Not if you want my help. 

Not if you want me, he ought to have said. Again and again, deep in the night when he was on the cusp of sleep, that slip of his tongue haunted him. Things might have been quite different otherwise. They might never have parted. 

Erik - though he was not yet Erik, then - sought acclaim and applause. It made him incorrigible. It made him a murderer. How much worse would he be if he discovered he could win another’s heart? What terrible feelings would rise up in him if he realized he’d already won it?

No. Better that they part as they did. Before either of them was further damaged by the other. If Farrokh was smart, he would have kept it that way. Gone to Britain or some other region of France, far from Paris with its music and architectural marvels (he’d never been to Vienna or Milan for precisely those reasons - he would be drawn to those places, Farrokh suspected). 

And yet in the end he’d come to Paris. One of the few things about his Erik that he knew to be true was that he was French by birth. Yes, he _might_ have gone to Vienna or Milan or Budapest, but he was certain to settle in Paris. When Farrokh started patronizing the Palais Garnier (and how very like Erik portions of it were - ornamentation and gilding, casting shadows, a hundred shining distractions, a thousand places to hide) and heard rumors of an Opera Ghost...well, he began to bide his time. 

And he was rewarded for his patience and effort. Rewarded with a glimpse of those yellow eyes and the touch of those invisible hands on his body. Satisfied to know that he yet lived. Apprehensive to know what had become of him in the years since they had been apart. 

But that could wait. In time, Erik would tell all. He had always been a showman; it was a deep flaw in him, as a magician: he couldn’t bear to keep how the trick was done to himself. As much as he wanted acclaim, he wanted approval. _Such a clever thing! What a clever boy you are!_ Ruefully, Farrokh reflected that if he had heard such things when he _was_ a boy, it might not have come to anything. They might never have met. 

Farrokh’s eyes were adjusted to the dark, enough to perceive Erik as a long shadow stretched out beside him, breathing deeply. Seemingly deeply asleep. 

“You’ll tell me,” Farrokh murmured with quiet confidence. “I’ll have it out of you. Where you’ve been. What you’ve done. Why you live in this manner. Then we’ll see what’s to be done with you.”

He thought he was asleep. The breathing hitched. Then a low, slow chuckle sounded around them, from nowhere and everywhere, then warm stale breath by Farrokh’s ear. 

“You always were a meddlesome busybody,” Erik - who had patently not been sleeping - smirked. Oh yes, Farrokh knew that. One had to be attuned to hear the smile in Erik’s voice when one could not see it. Farrokh fancied he knew every one of them. “Are you so sure you want to know, Daroga? You mightn’t approve.”

One long, cold fingertip traced an icy trail along Farrokh’s collarbone, just dipping in the hollow of his throat before moving further up to caress his jaw, lingering upon his lips. 

Farrokh ventured to kiss that finger. He was rewarded by a sharp, startled intake of breath. There. Erik was not the only one who could shock and amaze. Farrokh was not without his own secrets and tricks, though he preferred a smaller audience.

“Tell me,” he replied simply. “And let me be the judge of that.”

“Judge,” Erik muttered, withdrawing his hand. Farrokh sensed he had drawn it up against his chest, cradling it over his heart. “And shall you be my executioner? Is that why you came? Why you were looking for me, as you said?”

“It is no more than I said.” Farrokh sat up, feeling this was rapidly evolving into a conversation he ought to be sitting up for - that he ought to be donning trousers for as well. “Tell me. You made me a promise once. I want to know how well you’ve kept it.”

The sheets rustled, Erik rose and Farrokh followed the long lean line of him as he got to his feet. Black on black, a moving, shifting figure cloaked in shadows, rising like smoke from a half-smothered flame. Hidden danger, but a threat nevertheless.

Then he jerked sharply, an entirely human pop emanating from his joints. 

“I’ll put on coffee,” he grumbled. “You see? I have not forgotten what a good host is! No, no, stay there, Daroga. Not the light, I said!”

Too late. Farrokh lit a lamp, the one Erik had doused before they’d come together and got a good, hard look at him, even as Erik seized a dressing gown to cover himself. 

No, the years had not been kind. He was losing his hair and what remained stuck up wildly behind his ears and atop his ugly head. The spare, rangy frame was thinner now than it had been in Mazandaran, the skin an unhealthy jaundiced tinge and Erik’s face...worse now, than before, perhaps. Or maybe it had been too long since he’d seen it and the years had softened it in Farrokh’s memory. He did not have Erik’s gift for recall. 

Some of the things he’d forgotten came back, vividly revealed: the perpetual inkstains upon the beds of his fingernails. The fact that his shoulders, though slight, were broad and he might have cut an impressive figure if nature had been kinder to him. The constellation of moles on his left shoulder that resembled a starburst. 

But all was covered in wool and disappeared, except for the face. It stared down at Farrokh with a perturbed expression, a twist to the thin lips that rendered the whole slightly less morbid-looking; Erik was entirely less corpse-like when he spoke or smiled or even cried. Never did he look more like a corpse when all was expressionless stillness. 

“Or shall I take you above?” Erik asked bitterly. “Do you have the answers you sought now?”

Farrokh settled back down upon the pillows, crossing his arms over his chest. “Only one. You have coffee. I’d like some, if you’re still keen on playing the host.”

Erik smiled despite himself. Ah, yes. That was the face he remembered. More careworn and more hideous, certainly. But in essentials, the face that he’d seen in his dreams for twenty years. 

Farrokh had the answers he required; most of them. Enough to form a judgement: there would be no execution. No more killings, he made Erik promise. There might have been some bloodshed, he could not delude himself and assume whatever they discussed over coffee would be pleasant. 

But they would discuss it. And Farrokh would return to his flat. Perhaps, next time, he could persuade Erik to join him there. Or at least take a walk in one of the public parks the city boasted. They could go to the one with the big lake - Erik had always been fond of water. 

And, if Erik was amenable, next time they spoke seriously, rather than discussing his past, they could engage in speculation about their future. 

Yes, Farrokh thought as the smell of coffee wafted through the peculiar house. That would be enough to begin with.


End file.
